1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to electronic commerce, and more specifically relates to an apparatus and method for performing secure financial transactions in an instant messaging environment.
2. Background Art
Consumers continue to gain trust in the internet as a platform for purchasing goods and services. Due to this widespread adoption of e-commerce, users are beginning to purchase a wider variety of goods, within all price ranges at an increasing rate. While previous distrust of internet security prevented many people from risking information theft during low-cost or spontaneous potential purchases, spending on inexpensive items is now becoming big business too. As such, overall e-commerce spending continues to rapidly increase in pace.
Known methods of conducting e-commerce allow a user who wishes to purchase a product or service to invoke a web page of the vendor, fill in appropriate purchase and payment information into a form, and then submit the form. The vendor's e-commerce site then verifies the order information, verifies payment, and authorizes the delivery of the purchased goods or services.
This typical model of e-commerce described above does not work well in a real-time collaborative environment, such as an Instant Messaging (IM) environment. Let's assume that two users are chatting during an IM session. Let's also assume that one of the users agrees to sell an item to the other user. One way to complete the transaction is to have the seller list the item for sale on the seller's e-commerce site, where the buyer can then purchase the item by navigating to the web site and filling out a form with the purchase and payment information. This is a large amount of effort for both buyer and seller, and for items that are less than a dollar or two, the hassle is often not worth the time and effort. Without a way to provide simple, secure financial transactions in an IM environment, consumers will not be able to easily purchase goods and services during a chat session, causing an impediment to the spread of e-commerce, especially for inexpensive goods and services.